It takes two to Tango
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Disasters bring out the best in everyone – including sworn enemies.
The massive January 2010 Haiti earthquake featured little known, but unprecedented cooperation between Cuba and the USA. In the days following the disaster, Cuba opened up its airspace to US aircraft involved in emergency relief operations.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly thanked the Cuban government in mid-January and indicated the U.S. "would welcome any other actions that the Cuban government could take in furtherance of the international rescue and recovery mission in Haiti."
The US State Department also offered, and Cuba welcomed, the US making available medical supplies for use by Cuban doctors helping in Haiti after the earthquake.
But that was not the first time – or the last. Similar cooperation has long existed between the national weather agencies of Cuba and the USA.
The two countries are only 90 miles apart, monitors at the US national weather service in Florida and the pilots of US hurricane monitoring aircraft are in daily contact with their counterparts in Havana. The information obtained is also shared with neighboring states.
Many see such realities as proof that after almost five decades of generally frosty relations, Havana and Washington can and do find reasons for and ways and means to talk and work together.
Optimists see on the horizon the birth of a new era in US-Cuba relations. Barack Obama's election as US President was welcomed by Cuba's Fidel Castro as "a breath of fresh air". Obama said he wanted to "reshape" relations with Cuba and took early initiatives, including easing restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans and starting talks on migration and postal service issues.
Obama's first-year initiatives were cautiously welcomed in Havana, as well as within the Florida-based Cuban community and across America. But his second year brought other American political realities to the fore.
Obama's insistence on maintaining the 48-year-old economic embargo, American military policy in Latin America and continued support for internal political opponents of the Cuban government by US diplomats in Havana, have all angered many in Havana.
The 1980 "state sponsors of terrorism" US policy that subjects Cubans to the same heightened security screenings at all US ports as Libyans and Syrians has also continued under Obama.
On the other hand, the transition from Fidel to Raul Castro has offered nothing Washington yearns for by way of internal political changes in Cuba.
But amid it all, quiet talks continue between these two foes, even if progress is slow.
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